More Phrases I Got No Use Fer

It struck me that I'd left quite a few phrases I really can't stand out of my last blog posting about pernicious, annoying figures of speech. Strictly out of a sense of exaggerated comprehensiveness, I wish to add a few to the list.

Dish: AOL abounds with this travesty, where people dish about celebrities, diets, sports figures and other pop cultural gleefus. Yet nobody ever seems to dish a vegetable, and heaven forbid that there should be a meat dish.

Officing: I think the best thing I can say here is to echo something Stephen King wrote in the novella The Body: "F*** gerunds!" I couldn't have said it better myself.

Miley: Who the hell is Miley, and why is she suddenly all over the news like leeches on an unwary swimming?

Baby Bump: In the old days (defined as "when I was a kid") people didn't have baby bumps. They "showed". I think I like that better, because baby bump has a certain in-your-face aggressiveness, as though if you don't share the belief that Angelina's pregnancy is the most wonderful thing ever, Baby Gap is going to send thugs to your house to break your tumbs.

Dimpie: I used to know someone, a self-professed "military buff", who among other things used to wear t-shirts with nuclear-armed cruise missiles silkscreened on them. During the invasion of Iraq he talked about dimpies all the time - pounding them dimpies, hitting the dimpies. So I asked him if he knew what a dimpie really was, and he said it was a generic slang term for a target (in the same sense that pilots sometimes use the word "shack" to refer to dropping ordnance, though I don't know why). It's actually DMPI, Desired Mean Point of Impact, you jackass.

Unprofessional: Any time you disagree with anything that anyone does, you can label it "unprofessional" and there is no appeal. "Oh, well, the forklift operator thought I was being unprofessional; that's an open and shut judgment, darn tooting."

Snarky: I used to like this word, but it's wearing out its welcome with me. Practically everyone I run into (or read about) describes themselves as snarky, and they use it as though being snarky is a good thing. They intend for it to mean wittily satirical, but according to my dictionary, it also means rude and disrespectful. I think in the future I'll strive for being wittily satirical, but not snarky.

Kicks Ass: You see this all the time in metal circles. This band kicks ass, that band kicks ass, the other band left no ass unkicked. Let's be honest, not all metal kicks ass. Some metal kicks shins. Some metal bites the bag. Some metal just stinks. So let's come up with a new generic review term, shall we? Oh my God! I just went and saw Tungsten Barbecue and they totally contused my liver! Like, totally!